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Reviewer:enfieldco -
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February 14, 2006 Subject:
Too much of a consensus?
As noted in the prologue, it's surprising how much these too guys agree on, or more accurately, how little they disagree on. Finklestein puts a stronger edge on his observations and Ben Ami seems to be more circumspect, but both seem to agree some form of 2 state settlement is the way to go. They also seem to see it as the only way to "peace". In a positive sense I'd agree, after all, what's the alternative?
Trouble is they have too much in common, although they come at the issue from different perspectives which makes for such a nice positive case. Trouble is when you look at the whole "forest" and notice the momentum of events over time, regardless of whether the govt has been Labor or Likud. What we see is a trend toward total annexation and a "virtual", albeit relatively humane, ethnic cleansing, which has been going on since 48. This process has been proceeding at some times glacially, and at other times more robustly. Whatever constraints on underlying Israeli dispositions previously existed seem to have dissipated since the US has seen the need for even-closer Israeli relations post 911, further abetted by the aging truculance of Sharon, who seemingly wants to wrap up the job and does not really care how crude he is about the process.
What we observe in real life, beyond the PR smoke and mirrors, is an acceleration in the expansion of settlements. Add to this the development of settlement access roads to cut the remaining Palestinian settlements off from each other, not to mention building that wall to cut off water to whatever Palestinians are left on effectively disconnected scraps of worthless dirt. This is all objective stuff; we could then argue about the subjective pressure put on Palestinians purely in response to their acts of terrorism (which could be defined as anyting forceful enough to get the Israelis to give them so much as the bad hand-job they got at Oslo and later at Taba).
It'd be interesting to see how an articulate guy like Finklestein would argue against the neo-revisionism (sic?) that has come out from Benny Morris, who until recently might've been an intellectual soulmate. Morris now essentially throws up his hands and accepts the actions of Israel for what they ultimately are: an attitude which by its actions says you cannot make an omelot without breaking eggsjust go ahead and get it over with.
Maybe we should all cease this moralist hand-wringing about the Israeli Jews doing to others what the Nazi's did to them. It's not as though Israel hasn't done the Palestininan Arabs a favor by allowing them a chance to get out with their skins over the course of 50+ years, and it is not as though they've been firing-up any ovens.
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